u to be true with?"

"I guess you're too deep for me," said Jeff, after a sulky silence.

"Then it's all off between us? What do you say?"

"What do you say?"

"I say it's just as it was before, if you care for me."

"I care for you, but it can never be the same as it was before. What
you've done, you've done. I wish I could help it, but I can't. I can't
make myself over into what I was twenty-four hours ago. I seem another
person, in another world; it's as if I died, and came to life somewhere
else. I'm sorry enough, if that could help, but it can't. Go and tell
that girl the truth: that you came up here to me, and I sent you back to
her."

A gleam of amusement visited Jeff in the gloom where he seemed to be
darkling. He fancied doing that very thing with Bessie Lynde, and the
wild joy she would snatch from an experience so unique, so impossible.
Then the gleam faded. "And what if I didn't want her?" he demanded.

"Tell her that too," said Cynthia.

"I suppose," said Jeff, sulkily, "you'll let me go away and do as I
please, if I'm free."

"Oh yes. I don't want you to do anything because I told you. I won't make
that mistake again. Go and do what you are able to do of your own free
will. You know what you ought to do as well as I do; and you know a great
deal better what you can do."

They had reached Cynthia's house, and they were talking at the side door,
as they had the night before, when there had been hope for her in the
newness of her calamity, before she had yet fully imagined it.

Jeff made no answer to her last words. He asked, "Am I going to see you
again?"

"I guess not. I don't believe I shall be up before you start."

"All right. Good-bye, then." He held out his hand, and she put hers in it
for the moment he chose to hold it. Then he turned and slowly climbed the
hill.

Cynthia was still lying with her face in her pillow when her father came
into the dark little house, and peered into her room with the newly
lighted lamp in his hand. She turned her face quickly over and looked at
him with dry and shining eyes.

"Well, it's all over with Jeff and me, father."

"Well, I'm satisfied," said Whitwell. "If you could ha' made it up, so
you could ha' felt right about it, I shouldn't ha' had anything to say
against it, but I'm glad it's turned out the way it has. He's a comical
devil, and he always was, and I'm glad you a'n't takin' on about him any
more. You used to have so much spirit when you